


and nothing left to burn

by icarusilluminated



Category: The Traitor Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: (i.e. they're all women), (on multiple levels), Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - The Traitor Baru Cormorant Fusion, Canon Dialogue, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Other, canon-typical disagreements over the tension between honor and justice, gratuitous symbolism, no beta we die like tain hu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25490602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarusilluminated/pseuds/icarusilluminated
Summary: A question:If something hurts, does that make it true?Or, a test in two parts.
Relationships: Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén/Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo, Mèng Yáo | Jīn Guāngyáo/Niè Míngjué
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	and nothing left to burn

6.

Nie Mingjue dies well, which is not surprising, since she did almost everything well. It is that _almost -_ “daughter of a whore” repeating in Jin Guangyao’s mind like the waves on the shore - that lets her watch impassively as the tides swallow her da-jie whole. 

It is not a quick death, not a kind death. There are no kind deaths for traitors to the Throne. Asking would have changed nothing, and so she did not ask. 

Chifeng-zun swears and curses but does not beg, _honorable_ to the last as she clashes against one enemy she cannot hope to defeat.

Even at a distance, she can feel that bloodshot gaze burning twin holes through her heart. Jin Guangyao, watching Nie Mingjue, and Nie Mingjue, watching her. Su Minshan, watching them both. A perfectly balanced triad, for as long as she manages to keep her head above the water. 

3.

Meng Yao had rarely had the desire or the courage to argue with Nie Mingjue, and so one of the few times that she had stands out in her memory, a snare in an otherwise-perfect tapestry. It was late enough to be early, the camp all but silent as they passed a cup back and forth across the war table. 

Meng Yao was deep enough in her cups to be curious, and after a particularly deep swallow, she asked, “why are you fighting, da-jie?” 

It was a blunt question, inelegantly asked and entirely unsoftened by the endearment, so she was surprised when Nie Mingjue responded as easily as parrying a sword-strike. 

“I have a duty to my people. I would see them free.” 

Meng Yao’s eyelids fluttered shut, and she kept them still until the urge to roll her eyes passed. 

“And what do you mean by _that?”_ she tried and failed to keep any trace of bitterness from her voice, then cursed herself internally for the slip. 

Mingjue filled the cup, drained it, and set it down with a clatter next to the miniature Falcresti outpost: safe in the lee of a rocky outcropping, and perfectly positioned to wrap around Qinghe’s river trade and throttle. 

“Free to act with _honor,”_ she said, as though it were the simplest thing in the world, and Meng Yao would have been a fool entire to miss the bitter emphasis that Mingjue laid on _honor._ As was her habit, she did not say what she thought: that _honor_ was merely a credit rating for violence, that Mingjue’s definition of freedom sounded like a chain with a little slack. 

1.

_We can all be more than our bloody birth._

4.

She arrives at the Elided Keep a victor, the renegade sect leader chained below decks, and her own heart fastened even more securely. 

“Give me the keys to the brig,” she says to Su Minshan. The sneer of cold command sits uneasily on her shoulders, a garment well-tailored but stiff with newness. 

“You are a ranking servant of the empire, and I must obey you. However.”

  
The other Clarified she had seen spoke only ever in complete and correct sentences. There is something _imperfect_ in this one, whether a misstep in conditioning or some hereditary flaw that leaves her ever so slightly sullen where her brethren are rapturous in their obedience. Sending such a one to her is, certainly, another one of her father’s oh-so-clever insults, a slight he thinks her too simple to notice. Though it is certainly no fault of Su Minshan’s, she responds with a snap. 

“However, _what?_ Speak clearly to me, or speak not at all. _Homologia.”_

If the invocation of her word angers Su Minshan, she hides it cleverly. And Clarified hide nothing. 

“You must be searched, before and after your meeting. A higher authority will not permit you to give her the mercy of the knife, or any other secret thing.” 

“Have you so little faith in me?” she asks, teasing, as she holds her arms out to the sides to allow Su Minshan easier access to the pockets sewn at her sides. 

“It is not a matter of my faith. Such things are immaterial. I do as I am ordered, and in so doing, I serve the Throne. As do you.” 

It is very nearly a question. As the pat-down continues, Meng Yao allows a wry edge to slip into her habitual, placid smile. Let the woman-automaton have _something_ to report to her father, and his mysterious colleagues. It costs her nothing. 

7.

She knows why Su Minshan is here, and it is not to witness an arch-traitor’s execution. She hid the scroll cleverly in the cotton expanse of her sleeves, but the newly-minted Jin Guangyao forgot none of her mother’s lessons, and she recognizes the writ of deferment at a glance. 

To sign that poisoned scroll would be to manacle her own hands. It would be wrapping a garrotte wire around her neck, and handing Jin Guangshan the trailing ends.

  
There might have been a time when she would have done such a thing for Nie Mingjue, but no longer. Thanks to her da-jie’s honesty, Jin Guangyao has only one weakness remaining, and _she_ is gone beyond the Throne’s reach. 

2.

A test. To bring the five - now four - great sects to heel, untangle the knotted threads of treachery and aristocracy and _unhygienic mating practice_ from those few strands that show promise, so that what remains can be salvaged, unspooled and woven into the great tapestry of history. 

A rule founded on merit, one where a brothel-born peasant girl could stand on even ground with the most powerful men in the world. 

It galled her, and galls her still, that her father did not think her important enough to lie to. 

5.

Nie Mingjue’s injuries have been treated. It would not do for the lingering effects of some stray blade or crossbow bolt to rob the Throne of exacting Its justice. Though she is stripped of her armor and her sabre, shackled hand and foot, Meng Yao approaches her cautiously. 

Her trepidation does not go unnoticed.

“Are you afraid of me even now, _snake?”_

Meng Yao mentally calculates the length of slack in those chains before taking a delicate step forward. 

“Hardly,” she smiles, “you never could distinguish between caution and cowardice. I suppose that’s why we’ve found ourselves here, da-jie.” 

As Meng Yao had known she would, Nie Mingjue surges forward with a roar, and it is an effort of will to stand impassive as the chains went taut, her sworn sister’s hands clawing bloody gashes into the air a hairsbreadth from her face. 

“Traitor!” she roars, and Meng Yao feels a familiar thrill at bearing witness to the rage of a caged beast. All that she allows to show on her face is a deepening of her dimples beneath her porcelain half-mask.

_Do you understand now, da-jie? Does this adversity make you stronger, or does it eat like acid? What would you do, to cast it out like an infected limb?_

“Would you not do as I have done?” she says aloud, her right hand smoothing against the scarred skin of Mingjue’s jaw. “Have you not _already_ done as I have done? What do you think we will find, if we tally the blood on each other’s hands?” 

“No. No. Never.” Mingjue straightens in her bonds, trying to pull away from the mocking caress, “I told you once before. I am a woman of honor, but you… you betrayed us all, and I should have expected nothing less!” 

Meng Yao’s soft grip on her jaw turns cruel in a fraction of a second, 

“ _Expected nothing less?”_ she repeats, mocking, “why ever is that? Speak plainly, da-jie. Or has the great Chifeng-zun’s courage deserted her along with her troops?” 

“I should have expected nothing less,” says Nie Mingjue, each word measured out like silver, like lead, “from the daughter of a whore.” 

8.

There is no deafening silence: gulls shriek above the cliffs, and vultures begin to circle in narrowing gyres around the drowning stone. 

“Is there any reason for us to linger?” asks Jin Gunagyao, surprised at the effort it takes to keep her voice even. “The body will be sent to Falcrest, of course, but unless we’ve personally been tasked with retrieving it…?” 

“Wait,” says Su Minshan, something unreadable on her face behind the watchful mask. She makes an elegant, economical gesture with her left hand, and the ranks of marines stationed behind them part like a wave. 

Jin Guangyao had assumed them decorative, an honor guard to witness a traitor’s execution. Now she sees the woman who needed a legion to guard against her escape, and her knees turn to water. 

“ _A-Yao,_ ” says Lan Xichen, and her perfect eyes are wet with salt. 

9.

The unreadable expression returns to Su Minshan’s face as she amends the scroll on her varnished writing-board. The difference is nothing and everything: three elegant characters, written over a name that now means nothing but a waterlogged corpse. 

_I, Jin Guangyao, do order a stay of execution for the traitor, Lan Xichen,_

_And I do acknowledge that I order this stay in defiance of Imperial law, granted only by the extraordinary privilege of the Emperor, whose name cannot be known._

_And I do remand Lan Xichen to the Emperor’s custody, where her execution shall remain in abeyance so long as I provide faithful service,_

_And I do consent to whatever operations and interventions the Emperor sees fit to improve the prisoner’s well-being._

_Signed,_

10.

Signing this poisoned scroll is manacling her own hands. It is wrapping a garrotte wire around her own throat, and handing Jin Guangshan the trailing ends. 

In a fit of poetry, or desperation, or fear that in the time it takes her to find an inkstone, Lan Xichen will be drowned and dead, she writes her name in her own blood. 

**Author's Note:**

> A long time spent combing through the f!Meng Yao tag, and a longer time spent reflecting on how f!Meng Yao is functionally indistinguishable from Baru Cormorant, resulted in this. Worldbuilding details (is cultivation still a thing here? is Jin Guangshan actually a cryptarch, or just an intermediary?) are deliberately vague, and I've played fast and loose with elements from both canons (particularly the Clarified) for the sake of drama and/or characterization. 
> 
> Title taken from Autoclave by The Mountain Goats, of which this is essentially a songfic.


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